by Larry Bond
The stewards, all male, left something to be desired, but that was another story.
The flight itself was so quick—just over two hours—that Zeus hardly had time to finish his PowerPoint presentation for the Vietnamese. The general’s translator, a Vietnamese national on contract to the Defense Department, worked on a translation page by page on a piece of paper next to him as they flew. He hadn’t even had a chance to type it into the computer when the steward came back and said they were landing.
“The captain requests that you buckle your seat belts,” said the steward. “General? I’m afraid your seat has to be upright for the landing.”
“Yes, thank you, Sergeant,” said Perry, fixing his seat.
While the RT could fly at roughly ten times the speed of sound, the flight was extremely smooth, without the nosebleed, gut-punching acceleration of a fighter, let alone a spacecraft. For the passengers, taking off felt no different from what they’d experience in a Boeing Dream-liner, and the acceleration was gradual. On most flights, the same might be said of landing. In this case, however, with time at a premium—and no concerns about a sonic boom over the ocean—the landing was relatively abrupt. Zeus felt himself straining against his seat belt as the plane began to drop. The strain continued, increasing as the plane lowered itself toward the runway.
Even so, landing seemed to take forever. The RT lacked windows, so Zeus had no way of knowing how close to the ground they actually were. The noise of the engines continued to increase; inertia kept pushing him against the seat belt. Zeus felt as if he were stuck in a bizarre amusement park ride that would never end.
Finally the plane jerked up, then back down, the tires screeching. Despite huge shock absorbers that dampened the impact, the vibration could be felt throughout the entire craft as it slowed to a stop on the tarmac.
Zeus undid his belt and picked up his briefcase, waiting for General Perry to lead the way out of the cabin. Win Christian studiously avoided his gaze—just fine by Zeus.
General Perry paused in front of the door as the steward cracked it open.
“Smile, you’re on Candid Camera,” said the general, jokingly reminding them that Chinese spies were probably watching. Then Perry stepped quickly out of the plane, practically running down the moving stairway that had been rolled out to meet them. Christian did the same, springing down the steps as if he were jogging toward a reception.
Zeus had never been to Thailand before—in fact, his only tour in Asia had been a very brief temporary duty in South Korea—and he decided that he was going to take his time, savoring the moment and absorbing as much of the scene as possible.
The first thing he absorbed was the tremendous heat. Everyone said that Southeast Asia was warm and muggy; everyone was right. Zeus felt as if his clothes—he was in his Class A, look-your-best-because-you’re-meeting-the-top-brass, dress uniform—absorbed a gallon of water in his first step off the plane.
They’d been directed to a relatively secluded area of the airport, not so much to avoid prying eyes as to stay away from the simply curious. The RT sat at the center of a large expanse of concrete. The nearest buildings were a pair of hangars about a hundred yards away. A U.S. Navy Orion electronic intelligence-gathering, or ELINT, aircraft was being refueled in front of one of them, guarded by several sailors. A small civilian airliner was rolling on a ramp beyond the hangars, passing rows of warehouses and a fenced-off area used for ammunition storage by the Thai Navy.
A pair of large Korean Hyundai sedans stood with their doors open about twenty yards from the aircraft. Flanked by a handful of marines and sandwiched between two Hummers, the limos had their doors open, waiting for the general and his party.
Zeus got into the second car, sitting with the general’s administrative assistant, a prim but extremely efficient middle-aged woman with the unfortunate nickname of Candy.
If “Candy” fit any woman in the world, it was surely not this one. For Zeus, the name evoked images of a gum-cracking, lipstick-smearing woman whose clothes were always a size too tight. This Candy wore a skirt that came to her calves and glasses so thickly framed that even a librarian would have found them unfashionable.
Staying on her good side was highly advisable, since practically everything the general did went through her or Christian. And cultivating Christian was not an option.
“Hot, huh?” said Zeus as the doors were closed.
“I expected worse.”
“So, how long have you worked for the general?”
Candy turned and gave him a look that implied he had just asked a question requiring code-word clearance.
“A while, huh?” he said when she didn’t answer.
“A while.”
“Good boss?”
“My boss is the U.S. taxpayer.”
“Good answer,” offered Zeus, ending his stab at making conversation. Not even Rosen could have charmed this battle-ax.
The procession drove a few hundred yards down the concrete, passing behind an empty military bus before stopping in front of a Thai Navy helicopter. Zeus got out and followed the others into the helicopter. The chopper took off before he even got seated, rising quickly and turning hard.
“Wow,” said Zeus as he bumped against Christian, who was seated next to him. Though it was used as a VIP transport, the accommodations on the chopper were cramped and basic. The seat cushion had less foam in it than a cheap throwaway sunshade.
“Antiterrorist tactic, Major,” said Perry, who was sitting in front of him. “We’re in a war zone. Have to get used to that.”
“Yes, sir.”
The base didn’t look as if it was ramping up for war, particularly. A number of warships—patrol craft sized, mostly—sat tied up at their docks, all nestled together: an easy target for an enemy. And the traffic on the field looked no heavier than what one might see at a base in Alaska on a Sunday afternoon in July.
The port-area industries gave way to jungle as they moved inland. Suddenly the helo tipped hard to the right. The trees seemed to part, and a large green field appeared. They put down quickly, then scrambled out the door to another waiting chopper, this one a Sikorsky with no markings. In seconds they were airborne, and rushing to the northeast.
Their destination was Korat, a Thai air force base where a Korean Airlines jet waited on the tarmac for them. The jet was an actual Korean Airlines plane, leased by the U.S. so the arrival in Vietnam would be low-key. The pilots were U.S. Air Force captains, and shortly after takeoff they called General Perry into the cockpit to brief him on their flight plan.
Perry had Christian and Zeus go up with him. The cockpit was cramped, tighter than Zeus had imagined it would be—it was the first time he’d ever been in a cockpit of anything other than a C-130 or a helicopter.
Originally, they had planned to land in Da Nang—the old U.S. Marine base was now a Vietnamese airport—since it was one of the few airports in the country that had not been damaged by Chinese bombing. But the Vietnamese had done some emergency repairs to the Hanoi airport, and had passed the word that they preferred the delegation to land there.
“That’s where we’re landing then,” said Perry.
“It’s still very vulnerable to a Chinese attack,” said Christian. “And it’s got to be in their crosshairs.”
“We’re not going to score any points by landing in Da Nang,” said Perry. “And we’re going to need all the points we can get. We’re here to help them, but make no mistake, gentlemen: from their point of view, we’re the ones who aren’t to be trusted.”
That was the end of the conversation.
While the holes on the runway had been patched, the damage to the airport was considerable. There were still fires burning as the jet prepared to land, and much of Zeus’s view of the city and nearby countryside was obscured by coils of thick black smoke. The landing was so bumpy he was sure they were going to crash.
A Vietnamese army captain met them on the tarmac. The officer’s low rank could have been i
nterpreted as a snub, but Perry took it in stride. Nor did he balk at riding in the open jeep waiting for him.
Except for Captain Ford—Perry’s personal bodyguard and the head of the security detail—the rest of the small delegation had to follow in a bus. Christian started grumbling about the lack of proper protocol as soon as they were moving. Zeus was more concerned by the amount of damage he saw as they headed toward the city.
When most people thought of the damage wrought by a bombing, they tended to think in absolutes—whole cities or at least swaths of them wiped out. Images from history, especially World War II, reinforced this notion; the mind tended to remember the images of block after block of rubble.
But the reality of modern warfare was somewhat different. Smart weapons such as laser- and GPS-guided missiles were more discreet than the free-falling bombs dropped by B-17’s during World War II. The destruction they wrought, especially in the early stages of a conflict, tended to be confined to specific places, and generally these were military targets.
When planners talked about this, they tended to focus on how desirable it was to limit collateral damage. Civilians, they would say, were not the targets and should be spared. The main lesson of World War II—that there are no real noncombatants in a war—was an inconvenient and irrelevant point.
Zeus looked at the matter differently. Waging a war was like running a budget. Missiles, GPS bombs, even unguided iron bombs, were all very expensive. The side that got the most bang for its buck—pun only partially intended—usually won. So you didn’t waste your weapons destroying apartment buildings, or killing civilians for that matter. You used them on high-value targets, targets that played a direct role in your enemy’s ability to wage war.
The airport runways were an example, as were its fuel farms and the hangars where its military aircraft were stored. All had been hit. So had the small industrial parks just outside the airport, which was where most of the fires were still raging. These were of lesser immediate value, especially since few if any made anything related to the military.
But to attack the hotels and apartment buildings lining the highway to Hanoi? Building after building had been torn in half. Some looked as if they had been bitten by a large monster; others were little more than rubble. They hadn’t been accidentally targeted, either; too many were in ruins for that.
This told Zeus two things about the men running the war: (1) they were absolutely ruthless, probably determined to kill as many Vietnamese as possible and scare the rest, and (2) they had a large amount of resources at their disposal, much more than Zeus had anticipated.
Much more than the Red Dragon simulation called for. And China was practically unbeatable there.
Zeus kept his conclusions to himself as they drove through the city. They stopped in front of the Sofitel Metropole Hotel, one of the most famous and oldest of the hotels in the city. It had escaped the bombing unscathed.
The American ambassador was waiting for General Perry just outside the door, to the evident discomfort of her security detail. There were no Vietnamese army or police, plainclothes or otherwise, nearby. In fact, the entire street seemed deserted, even though it was the middle of the day.
“General, I’m glad your flight was a good one,” said the ambassador, shaking his hand. “A good decision to land in Hanoi.”
Ambassador Melanie Behrens was a short woman, barely five feet. A leather pocketbook hung by a strap from her shoulder. She clutched one end of it the way a soldier might hold a gun.
“Is this where they’re putting us up?” asked the general.
“No. You’ll stay at the embassy. Most of the government buildings were bombed overnight. They’ve moved some of the operations here.”
“Shouldn’t they be in bunkers?” asked Christian.
“All of the important operations are. This is where they wanted to meet.”
“We’re being tested,” Perry told Zeus before following the ambassador inside.
Perry’s assessment seemed at least partially true, but as the meeting with the assistant deputy in charge of defense began, Zeus got the impression that the Vietnamese had no expectation that the Americans would really help them. This was probably because their memory of the American Vietnam War was still very fresh, even for the men, like the deputy, who were too young to have experienced it firsthand.
The deputy, Hai Ba, was roughly the equivalent of an undersecretary of defense. Only a few years older than Zeus, he moved with a stiff and very formal gait. He also spoke English well enough to dispense with a translator, though one remained discreetly behind him during the meeting.
“We are grateful for your interest,” he told Perry and the others after they were shown into a small conference room on the first floor. “It is a difficult time.”
“We believe we can help,” said Perry. “The president wants you to know that he is extremely interested in assisting Vietnam at this critical point, and that he wishes to help in any way possible. He told me this himself. Personally.”
“That is appreciated.”
The conversation continued like that for a while, until the ambassador interrupted to say that America was ready to make its goodwill tangible. The president was willing to provide real assistance, including military intelligence, if the Vietnamese wanted it.
“What conditions?” asked the deputy.
“No conditions,” said Behrens. “None.”
“A man that was held prisoner by us now wants to become our friend?”
“In the president’s view, Mr. Deputy, Vietnam is just the first of many states that will be attacked by the Chinese,” said Perry. “He wants to stop the attack here.”
“It has been a ferocious attack so far,” said Ba.
“And it’s going to get worse. We have an idea about where the Chinese are going,” added the general. “And we have a plan to stop them.”
“I see.”
Hai Ba listened as Perry and the ambassador outlined what other things American aid would mean—and what it wouldn’t mean. No loss of Vietnamese sovereignty, no large formations of American troops on its soil. America would be a guest, a helpful guest, ready to leave when requested.
And in exchange?
“In exchange you stop these bastards here, now,” said Perry. “It’s a fair deal for us. A very fair deal.”
The deputy soon excused himself, presumably to report back to his boss. A succession of army officials joined them for discussions that were basically variations of the one they had had with Ba: generalities, never specifics. Zeus was mostly an observer during these conversations, and an unimportant one at that.
Not one of the Vietnamese asked what sort of plan the Americans thought would stop the Chinese. Perry mentioned several times that he had brought along “experts” who had studied the Chinese tactical situation; each time the Vietnamese nodded politely before moving on to other subjects.
Deputy Ba reappeared about two hours later. Zeus noticed for the first time that he was walking with a limp. Looking at his leg, Zeus realized that there was a bandage or a brace on it.
“The premier would be pleased if you could see him,” Ba said.
“It would be my pleasure.”
The jeep and bus were waiting out front.
“Nothing like treating VIPs in style,” said Christian.
A police car had been added to the convoy. Its siren rebounded off the buildings as they sped through the center of town. Whole blocks had been wiped out, reduced to nothing but rubble, while the next street appeared completely unscathed.
“They’ll get the rest tonight,” said Christian. “Hopefully we’ll be out of here by then.”
The Vietnamese took them a few miles south of the city, past a suburban section to an area of farms. They passed a large military base, where soldiers were mustering into trucks and armored vehicles; they sped by so fast Zeus didn’t get a good enough look to guesstimate how big the unit was.
Two miles farther down, they veered of
f the highway onto a dirt road. It looked like a mistake—the area ahead was an open field. Two motorcycles raced out of nowhere, overtaking them as if they were standing still. Two more appeared, slowing and flanking the military vehicles at the front of the convoy. As the land dipped down, a wall topped by barbed wire came into view. There were warning signs in front of the wall: the area was mined. The wall itself was lined with soldiers and flanked by two tanks, both of them ancient T-54’s.
Passing through a pair of gates, the convoy swerved slowly in an S pattern around a set of concrete barriers designed to slow a would-be suicide bomber. A second wall, this one much higher and also topped by barbed wire, sat beyond the first. A pair of men held open the gate at its center.
Zeus counted more than thirty men standing on his side of the road after they passed through the gate. Mobile antiair missiles and guns were positioned around a wide dirt courtyard. A half dozen small, low-slung buildings sat in the middle of the dust.
The structures were entrances to an underground bunker complex. Far from elaborate, they consisted of large concrete slabs that sheltered wide stairways. These steps, about twice as wide as the bus Perry’s party had taken, ended in a narrow hall that had a passage at the side leading downward. The passage was so narrow only one person could go down at a time.
A pair of guards waited at the bottom of the ramp. Each one of the Americans was checked for weapons with a detector rod.
“Your communication devices will not work here,” Hai Ba told them, watching as the checks were completed. “Just so you know.”
“Of course,” said Perry.
“The nonessential members of your party should stay behind,” added the deputy minister, glancing at the four Delta Force sergeants who were part of the security team. Perry told Ford that only officers would accompany him to the meeting. Ford nodded without comment; the order meant that only he would stay with Perry.
